Saturday, December 26, 2009

Hello and hope you all had a great Christmas. Here at 4LS, we love to redo old work and throw dozens of manhours worth of production material away, if it's for the sake of art and ultimately, a better game. A lot of that stuff doesn't really strike the eye because you never see the old versions that have been discarded. However, one change is definitely going to make some waves, so I thought I'd announce the fruits of a couple of weeks of hard toiling by moekki and delta:

We upgraded your loli.

The new Emi has a bit more mature air than her earlier design, perhaps more appropriate of a teenaged girl rather than a REALLY 18 YEAR OLD pseudo-loli. She grew almost 3 inches, but is still the shortest of the characters (so we can make bad jokes about it) and still of the same general build and shape. The reasons for redesigning a main character had mostly to do with stylistic consistency, we felt keeping the old design drove her too far away from rest of the art that features her (as you can see from the 100% completion CG in Act 1). Anyway, apart from maybe promo pictures and such you won't see more of her until full releases, any further Act 1 versions, released mostly for various translation projects, will retain the old sprites.

4LS Twitters

About Katawa Shoujo

Katawa Shoujo is a bishoujo-style visual novel set in the fictional Yamaku High School for disabled children, located somewhere in modern Japan. Hisao Nakai, who has had a congenital heart disorder diagnosed just a few months ago, finds his life turned upside down when he moves to a new town and school after a long hospitalization. Despite his difficulties, Hisao is able to find friends and eventually have romantic relationships with one of five main female characters.